Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead cut Chris D’Elia from the film in post and replaced him with Tig Notaro after he got caught sexting teenage girls.
Anyone who thinks 2hr38min is a bit brief could do worse than watching the 1927 silent move of Napoleon’s life. Depending on the version you could enjoy 5hr30min or so.
Yeah, but that was done in six months, whereas Scott managed the trick six weeks before scheduled release and made the original date.
I want to see who goes first - him or Clint Eastwood.
And which only gets as far as the invasion of Italy.
The way he played Commodus was closer to Napoleon than what this trailer would suggest.
Trying to explain the life of one of the most important human beings who ever lived in two or three hours is a hell of a challenge.
The best biographical films usually look at a small snippet of a person’s life and focus on how THAT tells you about just enough of the person to be an interesting story. “The King’s Speech” doesn’t go into George VI’s time in the Navy in WWI or post-war crap but you get a solid feel for the man. “12 Years A Slave” doesn’t tell us how Solomon Northrup learned to play the violin.
Besides your list of reasons that he’s inappropriate, I’ll also add his age.
If the movie is principally concerned with Nappy’s relationship with Josephine then that would be from about 1795 to 1810. Napoleon would be 26-41 years old. Joaquin is currently 48 and looks more like 52-55.
They’d need to de-age him for most of the movie.
It’s too late to recast now but someone like Adam Driver would have been a better choice.
Or Lincoln from 2012, which mostly took place over the course of a single month in 1865.
I hope the movie addresses why Bonaparte never intervened in the Feraud and d’Hubert kerfuffle.
On the other hand, Best Picture winner Gandhi from 1982 spanned the entire length of the Mahatma’s career, from his days as a young lawyer in 1893 South Africa to his assassination in India in 1948. According to IMDB, the running length was 3:11.
I saw a restoration of the 1927 movie back in the early 1980s in Chicago. I think it was the 4:00 version with Carmine Coppola directing an orchestra. It had some triptych scenes, which were pretty cool. I honestly don’t remember much about the movie, though.
I saw that back in the ‘80s, too. All I remember is the snowball fight.
Napoleon 2: Electric Waterloo
I agree. Two and a half hours will make for a long film but it will only be enough time for Scott to do a “greatest hits” biopic if he tries to cover all of Napoleon’s career. As you noted, most great biographical movies focus on a single period in their subject’s life.
Nice.
Well done.
Looks like Spielberg is making the Kubrick Napoleon project still.
I feel like if Kubrick’s version was all that great, it would have moved into production at some point. Not to mention that AI wasn’t all that impressive nor Kubrick’s other backlog project, Eyes Wide Shut.
To be certain, I’d hope for it to be good but I’ll keep my expectations tepid, for the moment.
Thread tag - documentary
I doubt this will be classified as a documentary…a biopic maybe. The dialogue will be fictionalized into a script.